Operations Management Suite (OMS)

The Operations Management Suite (OMS) is also commonly referred to as “Log Analytics”. So if you see/read any references to Azure Log Analytics, it is referring to the same technology.

If you have been following along with this series, you will know that some of the solutions found in OMS, are now being brought into other monitoring services (i.e. Azure Monitor, Azure Security Center, Network Watcher).

Additionally, over the past little while, there have been many changes to OMS, including:

Basically, OMS is Microsoft’s hybrid IT management platform. It can monitoring resources, performance, collect logs, networking data, security information, etc. And, if you’ve read the Azure Monitor portion of this series, more and more is being merged into that all-encompassing service solution.

OMS – Experience Center

Also, something worth sharing is that OMS has different categories of offers. This is how some solutions are grouped. There are 4 primary categories, namely:

Insight & Analytics

Automation & Control

Security & Compliance

Protection & Recovery

OMS – Solution Offers

But you may notice how most of the existing OMS solutions do not necessarily fall within one of these categories. It can be a little confusing, but just keep in mind that most solutions are loosely grouped under the Insights & Analytics category. For a quick and easy reference, there is a table that Microsoft created to show what category, pricing tier, etc. a solution falls into. You can find that table here.

Real Word Example

The real-world example of using OMS is (in my opinion) obvious. It’s a monitoring and management platform. So this means you can monitor your systems, applications, networks, etc. You can track issues with performance, security, patching, and so forth.

But, in the interest of consistency for this series, we’ll look at a few common uses that many organizations are leveraging OMS for.

Patch Management

Now, most companies will already have a patch management solution; and in a lot of cases, that solution is System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). And yes, SCCM can tell you what patches are missing in your environment.

But the experience in OMS is more visually appealing, AND, it also reports against Linux systems!

OMS – Update Management Dashboard

Security

Another real-world example is with Security. OMS has 2 solutions that fall under the Security & Compliance category; namely Security & Audit, and Antimalware Assessment.

If you’ve followed along with this series, again, you’ll notice that some of these are starting to appear in other Azure services like Azure Security Center (ASC).

OMS – Security And Audit Dashboard

Change Tracking

How many times, when something breaks in your environment and you ask “what changed?”, you get the standard response: “Nothing”.

With OMS, and in particular the Automation & Control offering, you gain access to the Change Tracking solution. This solution really helps to drill into what’s changing in the environment.

So, in an investigation or troubleshooting scenario, you can very easily see what Files, Registry, Software, or Services have changed. But note that it also detects changes for Linux system via Daemons.

OMS – Change Tracking Dashboard

Assessment

The last example is the various Assessment solutions. Take note that there is more than one assessment solution, in fact, to-date there are 3.

AD Assessment

SQL Assessment

SCOM Assessment

Note: There are other solutions with “assessment” in their title, but are a part of different OMS offers (like “Antimalware Assessment” or “Update Assessment”).

OMS – Assessment Solutions

But the other true “assessment” solutions, help you check your environment and workloads (i.e. Active Directory, SQL Server, System Center Operations Manager) against Microsoft and industry best practice; as a proactive spot-check.

OMS – SQL Assessment Dashboard

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Operations Management Suite (OMS) is (at this time) the current central hybrid monitoring and management platform. But, as we’ve seen throughout this series, and in particular in the Azure Monitor article, this is shifting.

All the functionality and power behind OMS is being folded into Azure Monitor and various other services, to unify the platform. This allows for deeper and richer integration across all resources and services in Azure, empowering for a better monitoring experience.